Monday, 15 March 2010

Interviews: Paula Malcomson & Esai Morales

“Amanda does become more human as this series goes on,” Malcomson said. “I think she becomes more real. She’s been wound tightly for a long time, I think, career-achieving, married to a gazillionaire, becoming a public fi gure, all these things. And then all these things get stripped away, and we get to see the layers of her.

“The plot really thickens each week. It starts to fl y and there’s more, I don’t know... deception, chicanery and betrayal. Amanda and Daniel are in trouble, and we watch them come together and fall apart. It gets crazier and crazier.”

For the moment most of Malcomson’s scenes put her before the camera with Stoltz. The two actors spend much of their time confronting each other, while also trying to allow viewers to glimpse occasional flashes of love and aff ection.

“Eric is a tremendous actor, a great partner in many ways, in terms of trust and commitment and hard work,” Malcomson said. “He’s so sophisticated, and it’s really, really lovely to work with him. And we’re very, very diff erent in our styles of working. The nice part is that we really respect each other’s methods.

“It’s highly complementary, this relationship. I’m a lot wilder in terms of how I approach the work, and he’s much more structured and prepared, but we come to this really nice, happy medium with it, and I think it comes off well.”

Q: So much of this show is very resonant with what’s happening today. For example, the society that’s depicted in the show seems to be obsessed with technology and success. What do you think the parallels are between the show and today? - Erik Meers
A: I think what I’ve always felt about our media and our technology – it outpaces our spirituality, our connectivity. We’re being outpaced. It’s like giving a loaded gun to a child who at five years old, you may or may not know what they have or how permanent the damage they can cause can be. I don’t want to explain too much of it, but I see this as a way to look at ourselves and what makes us human. Why do we get up? Why do we love? I have so many different directions I could go in my head, but to answer your question, I think it’s a perfect mirror of how, if we’re not careful, the ghost could be destroyed by the machine. Q: There are parallels with today also in terms of terrorism. Obviously, that’s a big strand that goes through the series as well. What do you think about that? - Erik Meers
A: It’s just that things are not as they seem, in the real world and on the show. I don’t think the show can afford to mirror the real world exactly, I think it does it in broad strokes. It gets quite detailed for a weekly television show. It’s quite an undertaking, but if it gets too deep we’ll lose some of the audience. We have to deal with these on an unemotional level because the great shows tell these stories on a gut level and make us identify in these characters and beware in our lives. I don’t even think we have to try. If you watch it and you connect with it, then it resonates. If you stick with the show, it will stick with you. Q: What can we expect in future episodes? - Erik Meers
A: You have to give it a chance. I do believe that the first act of what we’ve done with the cast and the crew as writers and people who are behind the scenes they were literally finding themselves. And by the second half, it comes togther. The show is finding itself through characters living and eventually making adjustments to those things and that takes the season to happen. Q: Do you have any experiences that sort of sum up your experiences of working on the show? - Erik Meers
A: Our director, what he does is, he’ll let you bring your best shot to the table and he’ll go, “That stinks,” and it makes you find things that you weren’t aware of and that’s what I think he captures – great performances. You don’t plan for that. The general feeling is that we really love our jobs, and we want to make special moments happen. Q: Are you almost done with shooting? - Erik Meers
A: I’m done completely. I think the show is wrapped shooting. We’re in the post-production process, just have to do some ADR, which is looping, some additional dialogue. I’ll do that tomorrow and in the remainder of the episodes and hope the audience enjoys this ride as much as we did making it.